


Frayed Threads

by w0rdinista (Niamh_St_George)



Series: Anything But Routine: DA/ME Universe [2]
Category: Dragon Age, Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dragon Age/Mass Effect crossover, Gen, Mass Effect 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2013-11-07
Packaged: 2017-12-31 19:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niamh_St_George/pseuds/w0rdinista
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That was just one more side-effect of having a dead sister turn up, not dead at all, and only very barely her sister—she’d made that clear enough.  But just having her on board, knowing she was here and alive had scraped off a scab Amelle had thought long since healed over, letting memories bleed through to the surface.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frayed Threads

Amelle had a headache.

When she tried to think back to when or what had started it—well.  There was the outside possibility Noveria itself had caused it.  Anoleis.  Kiara’s constant griping about the ice, snow, and cold.  Maneuvering the Mako through aforementioned ice, snow, and cold (and geth armatures; couldn’t forget about them) while Kiara griped, loudly and at length, about those factors _and_ the Mako, sharing a _charming_ story about the time Kiara had tried to teach Amelle to drive.  It was a story that had ended up with a tractor lodged in a ditch that Alenko had found far too amusing for Amelle’s taste.  Liara’s amusement was quieter, more distant, though Amelle wasn’t sure if that was because she didn’t see the humor in two colony girls stealing a tractor and then getting it stuck so hopelessly they had to find their father to tow it out, or if she’d simply been too preoccupied with her own impending family reunion.

Then again, the headache could’ve been the fault of Peak 15 itself.  Kiara and Alenko’s unlikely and unprecedented agreement on just what to do about the rachni queen, maybe.  Or… hell, the entire face-off with Benezia.  

Or maybe, just maybe, it was a headache she’d been nursing since a dead thresher maw, a destroyed ship, and one impossibly, astonishingly alive sister.

Amelle hadn’t let herself stop and think about what it meant, having Kiara alive—alive and on the _Normandy_.  How many times—how many nights had there been over the past twelve years that she'd curled beneath her blankets, hiding her head under her pillow and sobbing until her throat ached and her eyes burned because all she’d wanted at that moment was a word from her sister?  A touch.  A smile.  Oh, other times she wept just as painfully for Carver, for her parents.  But Kiara—Kiara and Amelle had had a different… bond.  Carver was her twin, but she and Kiara—

 _“Two peas in a pod.”_   That’s what Dad had always called them.  Their parents loved to tell the story of how, when Mama had brought Amelle and Carver home from the hospital, Kiara, then only two, had earnestly told Mama they could take her little brother back, that what she’d wanted was a little sister.  And when Daddy had explained to Kiara that things didn’t work quite that way, and could she possibly resign herself to loving both her siblings, Kiara had heaved a great, put-upon sigh and said, _“I suppose so, Daddy.”_

Her father had never, ever told that story without including Kiara’s lisp.

Amelle’s head pounded harder in the dim light of her quarters.  God.  She hadn’t thought of that in… years.  And yet that was just one more side-effect of having a dead sister turn up, not dead at all, and only very barely her sister—she’d made that clear enough.  But just having her on board, knowing she was here and alive and—and _here_ scraped off a scab Amelle had thought long since healed over, letting memories bleed through to the surface.

Kiara had taken it upon herself to make sure Amelle learned to walk before Carver—as if the twins were locked in some kind of competition comprehensible only to Kiara.  And when asked, she had only told their parents, “ _The sooner she can walk, the sooner I can play with her.”_

And then there’d been Kiara’s first day of school, her sister’s prized lunchbox in hand, red braids shining and her favorite knee-socks pulled up above gleaming new shoes.  Amelle had wept bitterly, throwing herself to the ground and clutching her sister’s legs until those knee-socks were bunched around her ankles.  

 _“Don’t leave me, Kiri!”_ she’d wailed, getting tears and snot all over her sister’s new shoes.  A banner moment indeed, one Amelle still cringed to remember, embarrassment twining around nostalgia and the ache of loss until her heart twisted with it.

But Kiara—Kiara had simply set her lunchbox on the ground, pulled her knee-socks back up, and then knelt down to look Amelle solemnly in her red-rimmed eyes.  She’d then patted the top of Amelle’s head twice and said, so very _earnestly,_ _“Don’t worry, Mely; we’ll play when I get home.”_

Too many nights she'd jerked awake from dreams where she’d clung to a dead sister, begging Kiara not to leave her again, only to be patted gently on the head and told, _Don’t worry, Mely; we’ll play when I get home._

Hell.  She missed her sister now more than when she’d believed Kiara to be dead.

Rubbing wearily at her forehead, Amelle opened her footlocker, pulling out layers upon layers of regulation blue, until revealing, there at the bottom, a small metal box—white with a bold red cross—fastened with spring clasps.  She pried up the hinged handle and pulled it free.  The box had belonged to Aveline—it had been her father’s, and his father’s before that, before there had been an Alliance to speak of, built to hold the type of medkits no one used anymore.

 _“Good safe place to keep things you don’t want to lose,”_ her foster mother had said, handing it to Amelle the day she’d received the package from Colony Services.

Gritting her teeth, Amelle worked the clasps free and pushed upon the lid.  Inside… was junk.

Well.  Junk to anyone else’s eyes.  To Amelle, this was all that remained of a life that had died in fire, screams, and smoke.  A miraculously intact teacup her mother had bought on a visit to San Francisco—the only piece left from an entire set.  A water-damaged leather-bound journal, many of its pages stuck hopelessly together; within were words her father had written with his own hand.  A weathered, tattered baseball—Carver’s—on which Kiara had drawn a hideous face for… reasons Amelle was sure had been sidesplittingly funny at the time.  

What remained was a little felt rabbit and fox, their paws stitched together to give the appearance they were holding hands—a rainy-day craft project Mama had sprung on them, possibly figuring it would serve them right for moaning so piteously about _being bored._ But they’d sat at the kitchen table, snickering endlessly as they assembled the little toys, piece by piece.  “Kid stuff,” Kiara had complained, despite the fact she was grinning as she stuffed her fox’s belly with batting.  And when the toys had been assembled—the little grey rabbit and the bright red fox—their mother, with a sharp needle and a few swift stitches, had made them hold hands.

 _“Sappy, Mom,”_ Kiara had said.  But neither of them had pulled the stitches free.

Taking a deep breath, Amelle took the fox in one hand and the rabbit in the other.  When she pulled, the thread didn’t so much as snap, but rather… gave up, coming apart as if the right moment simply hadn’t come along yet.  She set the fox aside and carefully repacked the other items into the medical kit, replacing it and her layers of clothing back in the footlocker.  Then, picking up the fox, she pushed to her feet, straightened her shoulders, and headed for the mess hall.

She wasn’t sure how she knew she’d find Kiara sitting alone at one of the long tables, glaring moodily into a mug of coffee.  Then again, it wasn’t as if there were a great many other places for her to be; the ship wasn’t that big.  The lights shone down on all the tiny braids twisted so haphazardly into her hair—a morbid echo of the neatly shining plaits her sister had favored as a little girl, until, of course, Kiara had cut her hair off to her shoulders and streaked it purple.  

Without a word, Amelle set the fox by Kiara’s mug.  A faded thread hung forlornly from its paw.

Amelle didn’t think she imagined Kiara’s sharp intake of breath.

“Here,” she said quietly, then turned on her heel—her head was pounding now; probably time to see Chakwas, who would likely make a disapproving face at Amelle and offer some dry comment along the lines of _“So much for ‘Medic, heal thyself’”_ —and started for the medbay.

“What the fuck is this?” Kiara’s voice sounded too sharp, too discordant to be her own.  

Amelle gritted her teeth and rubbed at her forehead, but she turned her head just enough to acknowledge the question.

“It was yours.”

Had her head not been turned, Amelle might have missed the expression that flashed across her sister’s scarred face.  The cool mask, more suited to sneering disdain these days, cracked for just a moment—just a _second_.  And for that second, in parted lips and widened grey eyes, Amelle saw a glimpse of the Kiara it pained her to remember.


End file.
